Budney began making interesting points at the onset, most of which are valid... but as he's been piled on from various angles, I think his arguments have slightly deteriorated. Good thing for truth that the merit of an argument does not reside with one lone poster on an internet gun board.
Very well said. There's no question that my arguments have been, to say the least, imperfect: perfecting them would take more research and time than I could afford to put into a discussion thread on an gun board. However, I think it's fair to say that my core arguments have remained sound throughout. Picking fault with the minutia is inevitable, but it misses the heart of the matter.
As for "racism," there are several problems with that line of discussion. For starters, Muslims aren't a "race," so I've preferred to say "bigotry." For another thing, the genocidal blood lust that crops up sometimes in these discussions isn't racism at all; it would be the same if the war were against Canada. Strictly speaking, that's jingoism. These things are similar in some ways, yet distinct, and there's no simple word or phrase that captures them all.
Remarks like, "We just haven't killed enough," and "if the lilly-livered chickens would stand back and let the army show 'em how it's done..." and so on are the sort of thing I'm referring to. Remarks in another thread, "Would you Sell a Gun to a Muslim?" are also what I'm referring to. By no means is everyone who supports Bush a racist. However, the racist/bigoted/jingoist contingent is very real and cannot be ignored.
But a good question is, if we all voted for Ron Paul, do you really think he would simply be able to turn tail and run IMMEDIATELY?
I think he's man enough to at least give it a try, but he'd fail. Everyone everywhere would be opposing him. On the right, folks would call him a cut-n-run coward; on the left, people would accuse him of being "imprudent." The military commanders would drag their heels; congress would delay whatever they could; bureaucrats everywhere would passively resist by sloppy performance.
But on the bright side, that's how they'd react to
everything RP tried to do, if he became president. Shutting down the NEA will be just as hard as pulling out of Iraq.
--Len.